The contemporary
wave of terrorism sweeping the world has its ideological roots in the
revival of a militarized religious nationalism with Saudi Arabia at
its heart. Unbounded by territory, it combines religion and politics
to create a “pure” and godly community and brings together
fragmented and culturally different people whose only common bond is
Islam.

In the Arab world,
religious nationalism was invented early in the 20th century in Saudi
Arabia, a kingdom whose goal was to unite dispersed people and purify
their religious beliefs and practices under the leadership of the
Al-Saud. This unification took place as a result of a fringe Islamic
revivalist tradition, commonly known as Wahhabiyya, which morphed
into a military religious nationalist movement. With time, the
project went beyond simple piety: Sharia law and conformity to
Islamic teachings were rigorously applied. Under state patronage,
this Wahhabiyya was turned into a quasi-nationalist project. Its
ideology has proliferated and now inspires Muslims across the globe,
fueled by petrodollars and globalization.

Early in the 20th
century, an all-encompassing Wahhabi religious nationalism inflamed
the imagination of a substantial section of the population of Arabia.
It provided the ideological tool to band together to achieve
independence from an ailing Ottoman empire that had little control
over this peripheral region of its Empire. With a political
leadership eager to expand throughout Arabia and to assert its
control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Al-Saud militarized
the fragmented tribal population, united them under an Islamic flag
and mobilized them to wage war against all those who refused their
homogenizing theology and radical Wahhabi message.

From the heart of
Arabia they spread across the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. They
created a state that has remained hostage to the Wahhabi agenda,
bigoted interpretations of religious texts, and violent strategies
whose aim is to control the behavior of Muslims and non-Muslims in
its jurisdictions.

With the
consolidation of the state, the various Saudi kings who have ruled
since 1932 had to tame the beast they created. They had to convince
the vanguards of this militarized religious nationalism to respect
borders, not harass pilgrims to the two holy cities under their
domination, and allow Al-Saud full control of foreign relations.

In its efforts to
institutionalize this unruly Wahhabi religious nationalism, the state
was forced to made concessions: It merged the armed vanguards that
had unified Arabia in the state’s nascent military institutions,
and granted the movement’s ideologues full control of domestic
social and religious affairs, especially education and the judiciary.

Wahhabi religious
nationalism was essentially detached from local cultures, and as such
had little respect for international borders or the idiosyncrasies of
local folkloric Islam. It sought to spread its hegemony wherever it
could, and to gain spiritual reward for bringing Muslims back to the
right path — as defined by their theologians. The Wahhabis thus
aspired to eradicate difference, diversity and pluralism not just
inside Arabia but beyond its frontiers. The latter project could only
take place once they controlled Arabia’s oil wealth.

* * *

This religious
nationalism was ironically both universal and local. Its universalism
was rooted in its quest to spread among the global Muslim ummah (or
community). But this universalism was tainted by sectarianism, and
thus excluded those Muslims who did not share their theology, both
Sunnis and Shiites, not to mention other fringe sects within the vast
world of Islam.

The first wave of
the militarized religious nationalism — dubbed as jihad against
unbelievers during the first three decades of the 20th century —
consolidated within the boundaries of Saudi Arabia. This was supposed
to make jihad turn inward, to launch local religious purification
programs to eradicate blasphemy, heterodoxy and other social and
religious behavior that deviated from their norms.

But vigorous
proselytizing in the local context was not enough to please the
Wahhabist vanguard. They sought a global role, which was granted to
them by the Saudi leadership as it struggled to establish its
legitimacy both inside the country and abroad.

They had to pledge
to correct Muslim beliefs and practices everywhere, using their newly
acquired petrodollars to globalize their movement. Religious
education, mosques, and religious centers had to be established
around the world to ensure Muslims would be brought back to
“authentic” Islam. From the 1960s onward, Wahhabi religious
nationalism went global.

With the Cold War,
Western governments, especially the United States, mistakenly
considered the Wahhabis an antidote to leftists and secular
nationalist revolutionary movements. Together with its Saudi ally,
the U.S. unleashed Wahhabi religious nationalism on the world,
especially in the hotspots of Afghanistan and beyond.

Preaching was not
enough: The vanguards had to carry arms, mixing their proselytizing
with an armed struggle to defend Muslims from occupiers and
transgressors. These short-sighted policies resulted in a global
jihadi movement, intellectually associated with the original
Saudi-Wahhabi nationalism of a bygone era.

Today, the
discourse, symbols, strategies and iconography of this old Wahhabi
ideology are inspiring pious and not-so-pious Muslims across the
globe. The message is known for its zeal and promise of empowerment,
both of which are associated with the fraternity of a recently
acquired religious identity, separate from local culture or
tradition. The originators of this wave watch and applaud the spread
of their teachings from their comfort zone in Riyadh.

This religious group
believes in the eradication of cultural and religious difference, in
sectarianism, gender discrimination, and the destruction of
archaeological and cultural artefacts. It preaches hatred against a
whole range of groups.

* * *

Their reading of
religious texts is literal and ahistorical: They imagine the past as
a glorious episode to which all Muslims should return. In their
relations with non-Muslims, they focus on historical atrocities
committed against Muslims and seek revenge. For many Saudis, the
recent attacks in Paris prompted a process of remembrance of
historical atrocities committed by the French in Algeria. Images of
Algerian martyrs were widely shared on social media — as if this
attack could be considered a response to the horrors of the Algerian
war of independence. The attack on the Russian civilian plane in
October was also labeled as an act of revenge, retaliation for
Russian atrocities committed against Muslims in Afghanistan, Chechnya
and, more recently, Syria.

Those who have
experienced the ugly side of globalization — permanent exile,
uprootedness, anomie, and disempowerment — are most susceptible to
the identity that religious nationalism promises. You can be rich or
poor, educated or ignorant, settled or immigrant. It doesn’t
matter.

This is an ideology
based on a false sense of history, victimhood and revenge. Its
quasi-universalism, clear lines between good and evil, insiders and
outsiders, and fixed gender roles are appealing in a world where
fluid identities are celebrated. With no real alternative, and given
the world’s increasing connectedness, it is likely to keep
attracting zealous followers.

The zeal of
religious nationalism turns ugly when it moves from the mosque to the
military. And even uglier when it becomes the religion of the state.
Whether in Saudi Arabia or in the nascent so-called Islamic State,
where religious nationalism holds people together by the power of the
sword, it is difficult to imagine an alternative way of being Muslim.

In Saudi Arabia, the
airstrikes on Yemen launched in March proved a shrewd move for the
government: They sparked the imagination of many Saudis who saw them
through the prism of their old Wahhabi tradition as countering the
hegemony of a rival Shiite power, namely Iran and its alleged Zaydi
Houthi clients. The Saudi leadership could not simply watch a rival
power such as the Islamic State take all the credit for eradicating
heretics. Both Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State came into being as
a result of the same type of ideology. Their interests may clash but
they share a common goal.

Unless religious
nationalism is replaced by new identities about being citizens in a
bounded nation in which people enjoy equality and rights, we will
continue to see a repeat of the terrorist atrocities committed in the
name of Islam.

Professor Madawi
Al-Rasheed is a visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at the
London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author
of several books on Saudi Arabia, including the newly published
“Muted Modernists: The Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi
Arabia” (Hurst, 2015). On Twitter: @MadawiDr